Notes taken by Kim Walters at COAG Working Group on the Productivity Agenda –Education, Skills Training and Early Childhood Development 12 June 2008 Melbourne.

Julia Gillard spoke about the COAG reform agenda

COAG is establishing preliminary statements of objectives and outcomesfor each Specific Purpose Payment, establishing roles, responsibilities and performance indicators

What would we like children to achieve in EC?

No specific one way of doing this but specific outcomes and outputs expected to receive national funding

National Partnership agreements with states

Improving teacher quality

Universal access to ECE for children in the year before school

National specific purpose payments introduced

Different starting points around country

Pursuit of excellence. Equity and new ways of thinking about disadvantaged

December National Agreements delivered

Teacher quality retainment and recruitment priority for govt

Status of teachers (looking at UKmodel to improve this)

Mentoring and support, challengingrewarding excellence, create an inspirational career path

Performance pay to raw scores is a quick fix idea. Want ideas that can be explored

Dr Ken Henry Secretary, Dept of the Treasury gave an overview of new funding arrangements to states

Replacing lump sum payments to states with 5 specific purpose payments(may be 6 if EC Dev and Schooling split)

Independent assessment in meeting agreed targets in National Partnership Reform payments

New coherent payment arrangements

Specific Purpose Payments (SPP) $33 Billion will be more rational. Based on funding agreements.

Greater budget flexibility for states within each SPP.

States and territories to decide how they meet agreements

Governance will be imposed not by government but funding negotiated as a package and agreed by COAG later this year.

Outcomes based accountability with independent transparent reporting on how outcomes are being achieved.

Reporting agreed high quality performance bench marks.

National partnerships to drive reforms

Intergovernmental agreement signed off in December

National sectoral agreement subject to change by COAG. If objectives are achieved may move on or be more ambitious. Statements of objectives and outcomes

Objectives

Outcomes: impact which the activity is expected to have on community wellbeing.

Outputs: services being delivered to achieve outcomes (may have to be used as proxy for some outcomes)

Roles and Responsibilities

Role of each jurisdiction and the responsibilities for which they undertake to be accountable for includes all factors in the sectors which may impact on the objectives.

Performance indicators eg. Data

Bench marks

Reporting and assessments

3 stage process

Statement of Objectives and Outcomes

Roles and responsibilities

Reporting framework

Performance indicators

National partnerships

Intergovernmental agreement IGA

Treasures negotiate funding

July

Preliminary Drafts

Reviewed (develop from existing funding)

Principles & guidelines

Preliminary

Reform directions

October

Finalized

Reviewed new funding

Proposals

Finalized

Proposal

Principles

Agree framework

December

Signed

Agree to package

Early Childhood Development subgroup

Chair: Wendy Jarvis

Proposed child health, learning and development outcomes

Enhance social inclusion, reduce disadvantage

 Universal Access for all Children in the Year Before Formal Schooling

 Early Years Learning Framework

 National Early Years Workforce Strategy

 Strong quality standards in child care and preschool

 Changes to the Child Care Tax Rebate

 JET Child Care fee assistance – extension of funding for study of up to two years

 Additional Early Learning and Care Centres

 National rollout of the Australian Early Development Index

 Home Interaction Program

The Early childhood development working group has been divided into working groups

Quality working party

Early Years Learning Framework

Early Years Workforce A-E accreditation

Performance Information management group

51,500 3 year olds in Australia

Don’t have accurate data

20% of 4 year old missing out

Universal access: may mean increasing hours and reducing costs

Consultation consulting:

Parent and families

EC experts

Providers

EC workforce

Commitment to provide opportunity for all to provide feedback

260 early childhood centres where should they be built? Website will ask for feedback.

July Quality reform paper

July EYF discussion paper

Consultation July to September

Office of early childhood education and child care

Consultation papers posted on web

Email, mail-outs and information published in relevant sector newsletters etc.